ABUSE TRACKER

CANADA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, March 23, 2015

Statement by Melanie Jula Sakoda of Moraga CA, Orthodox Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 925-708-6175, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com )

At their recent meeting in Syosset, New York, the bishops of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) again delayed defrocking Canadian Archbishop Seraphim Storheim.

[Orthodox Church in America]

Members of an abuse survivors’ group are outraged that the synod still has not removed the archbishop from the ranks of clergy. He was the OCA’s highest ranking clergyman in Canada, but was convicted of sexually assaulting an 11 year old altar boy in January of 2014 and is currently in jail.

[Winnipeg Free Press]

[CTV]

[Winnipeg Sun]

The OCA’s synod instead “reviewed” the report of the Synodal Commission, as well as procedures and a date for the spiritual court. They also appointed a committee of three bishops to “develop appropriate procedures.”

[Orthodox Church in America]

Leaders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, say that the denomination has publicly acknowledged that their sex abuse policy requires that clergy who have been convicted of child sexual abuse be laicized.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ARKANSAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

for immediate release: Monday, March 23, 2015

Statement by Melanie Jula Sakoda of Moraga CA, Orthodox Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 925-708-6175, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com )

The Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia (BOD) announced on its website on Saturday, March 21st that Archpriest Paisius DeLucia would be defrocked.

[Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese]

[Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese]

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is relieved that the founder and former head of Saint Innocent’s Academy (SIA) in Kodiak has been removed from a position of authority. However, they agree with the publishers of Academy Abuse that more remains to be done.

[Academny Abuse]

DeLucia was accused by at least 18 former students of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse. The spiritual court concluded that he publicly shamed kids, used vulgar language, engaged in unbecoming behavior while serving the sacraments, including interrupting liturgy to discipline attendees, violated confessions, and used “improper pastoral approaches toward the faithful.”

[Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese]

“First is must be said that this decision would not have been possible without the bravery and persistence of all the former students who testified at the spiritual court,” said David Clohessy, the Executive Director of SNAP. “We congratulate them on their victory and applaud their courage.”

Cappy Larson of SNAP added, “However, the diocese also needs to step up and explain what they will do in the future to prevent further abuses. As a mother it’s very disturbing to me that Saint Innocent’s was billing itself as a treatment center for troubled youth without any oversight from the Church or from the state. Kids with problems deserve a qualified and credentialed staff.”

“And are the BOD and Christ the Saviour Brotherhood (CSB) going to take responsibility for what happened to the students who attended the academy?” wondered Melanie Jula Sakoda, also of SNAP. “Father Paisius’ victims may need counseling and therapy as they try to heal.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, March 23, 2015

Statement by Melanie Jula Sakoda of Moraga CA, Orthodox Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 925-708-6175, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com )

At their recent meeting in Syosset, New York, the bishops of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) delayed a final decision on the election of Archimandrite Gerasim Eliel as the new bishop for the Diocese of the South (DOS).

[Orthodox Church in America]

However, members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, are disappointed that the synod did not act on their earlier recommendation to carefully consider this nominee and hold out for another candidate.

[SNAP]

Eliel had been the overwhelming favorite to fill the long-vacant see at a recent special assembly of the DOS. However, the OCA’s synod withheld their approval of this selection last week. Instead, they appointed the archimandrite as the administrator of the DOS. The bishops will review this decision at their fall meeting.

[Orthodox Church in America]

“I can certainly see why the synod would want to give Archimandrite Gerasim a ‘test run,’” said Melanie Jula Sakoda of SNAP, “The last candidate selected for the Diocese of the South, who went on to head the whole OCA 11 days after his consecration, was a complete administrative disaster, particularly in the way he handled sex abuse cases. However, if the OCA is serious about changing the way abuse is handled in their Church, the archimandrite seems like precisely the wrong kind of candidate.”

[SNAP]

Cappy Larson, also a SNAP leader, agreed.

“The OCA is still reeling from the conviction of Archbishop Seraphim Storheim for the sexual abuse of a child. I can’t believe the synod would seriously consider a man who spent so much time in the company of two notorious sexual predators, and has yet to say a public word against either. Is it really sensible to continue to entertain promoting a man who thinks it’s more important to conceal predators then to protect the vulnerable and help heal the wounded?”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CHILE
Cooperativa

[The spokesman for the organization of lay men and women of Osorno, Juan Carlos Claret, said in an interview with Cooperativa that the movement will continue with the demonstrations against Bishop Juan Barros. He said violence on Saturday was because of lack of dialogue with church officials over the appointment of the new bishop.]

El vocero de la organización de laicas y laicos de Osorno, Juan Carlos Claret, aseguró en Cooperativa que el movimiento continuará con las movilizaciones por la asunción de Juan Barros como obispo de la comuna.

El dirigente social además aseveró que las violentas manifestaciones que se produjeron el sábado en la ceremonia, en la cual Barros asumió su obispado, vienen dadas debido a otros actos de “violencia”.

“El acto de violencia que ocurrió el día sábado tiene una violencia primigenia: violencia es negación al diálogo y los que se han rehusado a dialogar sistemáticamente con nosotros cuando lo hemos solicitado por conducto regular ha sido la Conferencia Episcopal y Juan Barros Madrid”, manifestó el Una Nueva Mañana de Cooperativa.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CHILE
Terra

[PRO asked to investigate possible concealment of Bishop Barros.]

Esta mañana, la Directiva Nacional del Partido Progresista, se pronunció respecto al nombramiento de Juan Barros Madrid, como nuevo Obispo de Osorno

Al respecto, Andrea Condemarin, Vicepresidenta del PRO, señaló que “resulta extremadamente preocupante y grave la nominación de Juan Barros, como Obispo de Osorno, debido a que existen acusaciones sobre que habría encubierto los abusos perpetrados por Karadima”.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Father Luis Camacho allegedly had the 17-year-old girl hide in his car as he drove her away from school.

Guam – The priest who was arrested last week on allegations of custodial interference over a 17-year-old student is now being accused of having “sexual contact” with her.

Deacon Stephen Martinez, whose position with the Archdiocese is under threat over his involvement with the Concerned Catholics of Guam, has written a letter to Archbishop Anthony Apuron and to Child Protective Services to “formally file a report” that sexual abuse has occurred with a clergy member.

Specifically, Deacon Martinez writes that Father Luis Camacho, the former pastor of the San Dimas and San Dionisio parishes, picked up a female student from her school without permission and drove her to a remote beach in Agat. Martinez says Father Luis Camacho even had the girl hide in his car as they drove away from school. Martinez says Father Camacho then “had sexual contact with her.”

Martinez goes on to cite the Archdiocese’s policy on sexual misconduct dating back to April 2002.

The Archdiocese’s Sexual Abuse Response Coordinator Deacon Larry Claros, one day after Father Camacho was arrested, declined to comment on the matter when questioned by PNC. However, the Archdiocese did release a media statement confirming that Father Camacho was arrested on a charge of custodial interference and that he had resigned from his position as a result. Details of his arrest were not provided.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

A disgraced former Catholic priest received an 18 month suspended prison sentence for what a judge described as “a significant and grievous breach of trust” for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old boy in his care.

Daniel Curran, 64 and of Bryansford Avenue, Newcastle, appeared in the dock of the Downpatrick Crown Court on Monday for sentencing after he pleaded guilty to one count of gross indecency towards a male child and also admitted a single charge of indecent assault on the same victim.

The offences took place between August 1990 and August 1993 at a cottage owned by his family in Co Down when the victim was aged between seven and 10.

Passing sentence, Judge Piers Grant told Curran that he had pleaded guilty to “serious offences” by “deliberately targeting groups of individuals” to ply them with alcohol so he could abuse them in the family cottage.

Prosecution QC David McDowell told the court that the victim was a pupil of a primary school in north Belfast and at the age of seven, Curran came to the school in his role as a priest and asked him if he wanted to serve as an altar boy.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
The Australian

MARCH 24, 2015

Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney

One of Sydney’s most prestigious private schools, whose alumni ­include Tony Abbott, has announced a former pupil may have been sexually abused as a child,­ ­almost a year after reporting the matter to police.

The revelation follows evidence to a royal commission earlier this month that pupils were sexually abused by teachers at Sydney’s Knox Grammar School, and that senior staff may have failed to disclose this to police.

Paul Hine, the principal of the Jesuit-run St Ignatius’ College, Riverview on Sydney’s lower north shore, yesterday wrote to alumni saying a “former student … has made allegations concerning child sexual abuse over 30 years ago”.

“I am also communicating with all the boys today, in an age-­appropriate manner so that they do not hear about this matter in a piecemeal way, or in a situation where they have no reassurances,” Mr Hine wrote.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Two new predator priest lawsuits filed
Perpetrator admitted abuse, sent to prison
But LA archbishop has never reached out to parishes
Another LA predator may still be working in Philippines
Silence is dangerous, victims tell archbishop

WHAT:
Holding signs and pictures of themselves at the age they were abused, sex abuse victims will:

– Disclose two new child sex abuse and cover up lawsuits against the LA Archdiocese and a now-convicted priest, and
– Blast the LA Archbishop for possibly letting another LA predator to work as a priest in the Philippines.

They will also beg the LA Archbishop to:
– Reach out to communities where convicted predator worked and may have abused, and
– Demand that Philippine bishops suspend an accused LA cleric who is working there.

WHEN:
Monday, March 23 at 11 am

WHERE
Outside of the LA Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W Temple St (at Hill), Los Angeles

WHO:
5 to 6 men and women who were sexually abused as children, and their supporters, who are members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), the nation’s largest support group for people who have been sexually abused in religious or institutional settings

WHY:
On Friday, two victims of now-convicted LA predator priest Carlos Rodriguez filed a sex abuse and cover-up lawsuit against the priest and the Los Angeles Archdiocese. SNAP believes that there may be more victims and that Archbishop Jose Gomez is doing little to reach out to them.

The boys in the lawsuit charge that they were assaulted by Rodriguez while the priest was working at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Santa Paula between 1989 and 1991 when they were 7-10 years old.

According to the suit, Rodriguez was accused in 1987 of molesting a boy on a trip out of state. When allegations surfaced, Rodriguez told church officials—including then-Cardinal Roger Mahony—that he had molested the boy. Rodriguez was then sent to a church-run treatment facility.

When he came back to LA, Rodriguez was assigned by Mahony to the Office of Family Life in Ventura. While there, Rodriguez worked in parishes throughout Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. Rodriguez has at least six known victims.

“This is a tragic case,” said Joelle Casteix, SNAP Western Regional Director. “There could be a dozen kids who were molested by this priest. Yet not once, as best we can tell, has Archbishop Gomez done anything to reach out and encourage victims to call law enforcement.”

Rodriguez was removed from the priesthood in the late 1990s. He was convicted of felony child sexual abuse in 2002 and convicted to four years in prison.

[Los Angeles Times]

He lives in Huntington Park and is a registered sex offender.

In a similar situation, victims are also urging Gomez to prod Philippines church officials to investigate Rev. Ruben V. Abaya. SNAP believes this is the same Abaya who sexually molested a Los Angeles girl in 1980. Abaya was only in Los Angeles for 11 days when he and other priests allegedly gang raped Rita Milla at St. Philomena Parish in Carson.

[BishopAccountability.org]

“The least that Gomez can do is to warn communities that there may be a danger, but we haven’t even seen him try that,” Casteix said. “Even Pope Francis agrees that bishops should do everything they can to keep children safer from abuse.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Magic City Morning Star

By Laure McCourt Lopez
Mar 22, 2015

In life, there are subjects that one may find difficult to discuss and then there are those topics that create such an emotional upheaval within the soul that few dare venture to acknowledge let alone give words to. Fortunately, a voice has been raised via Carol Kuhnert, author of “No Longer on Pedestals,” a book that exposes the darkness that resided in the life of Carol’s brother, Fr. Norman H. Christian.

The purpose of the writing is made quite clear within the journal’s introduction: “My purpose in writing this book is to open the minds and hearts of those who find it difficult to believe clergy have been sexually abusing children for many decades and that the Catholic Church has made protecting the abusers and the church’s assets its number-one priority, while leaving the victims, their families and church members to fend for themselves in trying to heal, understand and cope.”

The backdrop is created as the reader is immersed in the daily activities and beliefs of the early years of the Henry and Verona Christian family of St. Louis, Missouri. One can relate to the memories that unfold upon the pages, particularly those readers of a Catholic upbringing. Amid the pleasantries of the past, particular characteristics begin to emerge in Carol’s brother’s personality, ones that will replay in future events. Fr. Norman Christian attended seminary and was ordained a priest on March 18, 1961. Carol writes of a common belief that was shared in that generation: “During my childhood, I held all clergy, priests and nuns as people with a very special calling from God. I was taught to trust them completely. They were right next to God in my eyes…”

As the years unfolded, it was revealed that Norman had harbored a dark thread of dishonesty and deceit that touched innocent lives; just as a pebble is thrown into a pond, one quickly views how the rings breaking the water expand outward, revealing how one introductory action multiplies and expands in time. And so it was with Fr. Christian.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

FLORIDA
New Times

BY KYLE SWENSON
MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2015

Snowbirds land in South Florida hauling all sorts of baggage. For one former Connecticut resident, that includes six lawsuits stemming from allegations of Catholic church sex abuse. The most recent allegations hit just last week.

n the late 1970s and early 1980s, Father Walter Phillip Coleman was the priest at St. Patrick’s, a Catholic church in Bridgeport, Connecticut. During that time, an altar boy was working directly under Colemam when the priest, the lawsuit alleges, “sexually assaulted, sexually battered, and sexually exploited” him. The victim “suffered physical injuries resultant from the sexual abuse and assault and severe emotional injuries including emotional distress, anxiety, frustration, disassociation, posttraumatic stress, and permanent physiological scarring.”

Though Coleman has not faced related criminal charges, since the 1990s, five other people have come forward to file lawsuits in Connecticut. “Father Coleman was sexually exploiting, assaulting, and abusing minor children in his parish for years, with impunity,” Jason Tremont, the Bridgeport-based representing all six victims, said in a recent statement. “Parents and guardians entrusted their children to the care and protection of the church. Rather than protect them, Father Coleman violated them physically, morally, and spiritually.”

All the suits say that the Bridgeport diocese let the abuse happen under its watch and should have known Coleman was a predator. As early as 1976, higher-ups at the church had gotten complaints about Coleman’s behavior with the boys. The priest, the church, and the diocese have all been named as defendants in the lawsuits. In the previous five cases, the diocese settled with the victims.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

SCOTLAND
Catholic Herald

by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith posted Monday, 23 Mar 2015

The Church may be quite good at handing out punishments, but seems less good in letting some sinners know they are forgiven

The news that Cardinal O’Brien is now a cardinal in name only is not really news. Two years ago, he was not present at the conclave that elected Pope Francis. Given that the only real function that cardinals exercise of right is that of voting in a conclave, one can say that by staying away, Cardinal O’Brien effectively resigned his privileges then. What has happened now is that this resignation has been made official.

Given the cardinal’s age, and the fact that he would have lost his vote anyway at the age of 80, one assumes that this resignation means only one thing of importance: it creates a vacancy, which matters, as the number of Cardinals is fixed at 120, though, of course, popes sometimes break this rule.

Again, the news that Cardinal O’Brien has had a house bought for him to live in is not really news either. All retired clergy are given a place to live when they retire. When they die, or go into other accommodation, the house returns to the diocese which retained ownership all along.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED KINGDOM
Scotsman

THE name of a dead Labour MP has been passed to an investigation into an alleged paedophile network, it has emerged.

The Church of England said it had passed an allegation about Leo Abse to Operation Fernbridge, a Metropolitan Police inquiry.

The Sunday Times reported that Mr Abse, who died in 2008 aged 91, was being investigated by police on suspicion of child abuse.

The newspaper said documents from South Wales Police revealed that claims against the long-serving politician were being examined by another force.

South Wales Police had no information about the story, and Scotland Yard would not confirm or deny whether it was involved.

The newspaper said the Church of England had passed Mr Abse’s name to detectives from Fernbridge, a Metropolitan Police inquiry into an alleged Westminster VIP paedophile network.

A Church of England spokesman said: “An allegation was made to a priest, who passed it on to us, and we passed it on to Fernbridge.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

23 MARCH 2015

A priest accused of defying his vow of celibacy to have an affair with a woman who became pregnant was forced to cancel a talk to parishioners about marriage just days before the scandal became public.

The 49-year-old businesswoman at the centre of the storm, known only as ‘Linda’, claimed she got pregnant by Fr Ciaran Dallat (51) before she miscarried at five weeks.

The north Belfast woman claimed that Fr Dallat, an assistant priest at St Peter’s Cathedral just off Belfast’s Falls Road, slept with her three or four times a week during the relationship, which began in September 2012 and lasted until April 2014.

During that time, the woman said she showered the priest with gifts worth £20,000. They included a two-week Nordic cruise that cost £3,700; meals at some of Belfast’s most exclusive restaurants; designer clothes and top-of-the-range furnishings for his apartment near St Peter’s Cathedral, in the heart of one of west Belfast’s most deprived communities.

Linda claimed the affair only ended in April last year – two weeks after her mother died.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter

Last summer, the chair of the UN Human Rights Committee described Ireland’s human rights record, particularly in relation to women and children, as ‘quite a collection’.

In a withering assessment, Nigel Rodley, a leading expert in international human rights law, and a former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, said Ireland’s collection of human rights failures have gone on for a period that was hard ‘to imagine any state party tolerating’.

From Magdalene laundries and the mother-and-baby homes to child abuse and symphysiotomy, recent years have seen the UN repeatedly criticise Ireland’s human rights record on a range of fronts.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

Click here to see a BBC video of the near riot that erupted at the cathedral at Osorno, Chile where protesters tried to stop the ordination of their new bishop, Juan Barros.

Barros is implicated in a cover up of sexual abuse.

The background is this. In a situation that’s very similar to that of Fr. Maciel of the Legion of Christ, a Chilean priest, Fernando Karadima, played up to the wealthy conservative elements in Chilean Catholic society and established a kind of parallel Church, cultivating a group of followers, some of whom became priests – and one of whom is now the bishop of Osorno. And all the while this Fr. Karadima was sexually abusing boys and young men.

He had trained five bishops and dozens of priests, acting as a spiritual leader and father figure for young men who later accused him of molesting them. (The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2011)

Complaints and red flags popped up for many years, but Karadima’s bishop ignored them, covered for Karadima, and in effect facilitated his crimes. The Vatican eventually sentenced Karadima to a “life or prayer and penance”.

Karadima was not only the “mentor” of the new Bishop Barros, but Barros himself has been implicated in Karadima’s crimes …

While Barros himself is not accused of molestation, at least three credible victims say he was present when they were sexually molested by powerful Fr. Fernando Karadima in the 1980s and 90s.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

I just posted about what T. S. Eliot might have called Riot in the Cathedral, the situation in Osorno, Chile, where a mob of almost 1,000 protesters tried to stop their new bishop from being ordained.

In that post I mentioned the man who started this trouble, Fr. Karadima.

I just now discovered that Rod Dreher mentioned Karadima in an update to one of his posts in April of last year. It’s worth quoting this update in full, as well as the observations made by Adam DeVille that Rod includes on what it would take to reform this problem, and (by implication) why we’ve gotten to where we are.

***

Here are comments from links posted in the comments section. First, someone put up this essay by Lee Podles, the orthodox Catholic writer who has done deep investigation on the scandal. Excerpt:

Francis is a fixer. Whenever a parish or diocese experience a disaster, a fixer is sent in, as O’Malley was to Boston. Francis is the papal fixer. He is changing the subject from sexual abuse by his charm, hominess, and willingness to let people indulge their minor vices without a censoring voice from the clergy.

A fixer differs from a reformer in that a fixer does not address the roots; he is not radical. He merely papers over the problem, merely puts a poultice on the cancer.

Karadima is a terribly abusive priest in Chile. The archbishop of Santiago told him to stop saying mass in Public. Karadima ignored the order, and photos of him saying mass were tweeted to tens of thousands of people.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

23 March, 2015

The Royal Commission has published the submissions of all governments, as well as non-government organisations and individuals expected to attend the public hearing on redress and civil litigation commencing this Wednesday 25 March 2015.

Invited participants will speak to their submissions at the public hearing, which is scheduled for three days.

All other submissions will be published shortly once procedural fairness and privacy checks are completed, subject to any confidentiality restrictions.

The submissions were received in response to a consultation paper on redress and civil litigation released by the Royal Commission on 30 January 2015.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Church refuses to comment on reports priest has been suspended after woman’s affair claims

BY NEVIN FARRELL – 23 MARCH 2015

Catholic Church officials have refused to confirm or deny reports that a priest at the centre of a storm over allegations he had a sexual relationship with a woman and made her pregnant has been suspended.

Some Mass-goers at St Peter’s Cathedral in Belfast last night said they believed Fr Ciaran Dallat (53), the assistant priest in the parish, had been suspended amid an investigation by Church bosses.

The woman who claimed she had an affair with Fr Dallat said she miscarried his child in July 2013 after a five-week pregnancy.

She also said she had showered him with £20,000 worth of gifts.

However, when asked about the alleged suspension, a spokesman for the Diocese of Down and Connor said: “The only statement is that provided earlier.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Wales Online

The late Welsh MP and solicitor Leo Abse is being investigated by police examining allegations of child abuse, according to reports.

The Sunday Times says documents from South Wales Police reveal that allegations against the long-serving politician, who died in 2008 aged 91, are being examined by another force.

The Sunday Times says it understands the investigation is centred on an alleged “politicians’ network” involving Abse’s close friend George Thomas, the former Labour Speaker of the House of Commons.

Last year it emerged that Thomas, Viscount Tonypandy, who died in 1997, was being investigated for sexually abusing a nine-year-old boy in Cardiff in the late 1960s. …

The Sunday Times said it had also established that a Church of England review into historic sexual abuse has passed Abse’s name to detectives from Operation Fernbridge, a Metropolitan police inquiry into an alleged Westminster VIP paedophile network.

The newspaper said Dominic Walker, the former Bishop of Monmouth, has told senior clerics that Abse was named by three alleged adult survivors of abuse whom he counselled when he was vicar of Brighton in the 1980s.

It said Walker was questioned by Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham who is leading the Church of England review, after the discovery of a book from 1991 in which he is quoted as describing counselling sessions with adult survivors.

“A number of survivors independently gave the name of a particular MP as being involved. I don’t believe there was any collusion in their stories,” Walker said.

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INDIANA
The Elkhart Truth

Michelle Sokol

The Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary community gathered in an emotional service Sunday afternoon, March 22, to acknowledge the pain and trauma inflicted on more than 100 women who were sexually violated by renowned theologian John Howard Yoder.

It was the first time AMBS publicly took responsibility for the abuse and neglect, which happened in the ’70s and ’80s and was first publicized by The Elkhart Truth in 1992.

It was also the first time leaders in the seminary publicly apologized to the women who were victimized.

“What was done to you, whether sinful acts of commission or omission, was grievously wrong,” current AMBS President Sara Wenger Shenk said during a lengthy apology. “It should never have been allowed to happen. We failed you. We failed the church. We failed the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

Maeve Lewis
PUBLISHED
23/03/2015

When the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse began its work, hundreds of adults who had grown up in the care of the State gave evidence about their experiences in the residential institutions.

A horrifying story began to emerge, as witness after witness gave consistent, compelling accounts of emotional and physical abuse, sexual abuse, cruelty and neglect.

The witnesses spoke on the understanding that the records of their testimony would be destroyed when the final report was published. Many of them had never spoken before about their experiences and some had never told anybody, even wives and husbands, about what they had endured.

Some still carried immense shame and were afraid that their histories could be accessed inappropriately.

Following the publication of the Ryan Report in 2009, Irish people were shocked, saddened and outraged by what the children had endured.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Editorial

Case by case, disgraced institution by disgraced institution, our eyes are being opened. The royal commission charged with investigating how institutions deal with child sexual abuse is remaking our understanding of the people and places we entrust with the safekeeping of our children.

Reputations have crumbled before the measured march of the commission’s inquiries. It has exposed to national scrutiny a rotten core of cover-ups and cowardice within some of our most respected organisations; the blind eye turned to molesters, the benefit of the doubt given to workmates, policies to prevent or redress abuse never practised, the bottom line placed above compassion for victims, and the guarding of reputation above everything.

Time and again we have been floored by the failure of authority figures to understand the nature of child sexual abuse and their legal obligations. Time and again, we have heard victims were disbelieved by those they turned to for help.

Perhaps former prime minister Julia Gillard understood what it would mean when she announced the royal commission in late 2012 – but for most the sweep of its investigations has been a revelation: from government homes and Christian orphanages to the Yeshiva colleges in Bondi and Melbourne, from Swimming Australia to the YMCA, from Pentacostal churches to the Satyananda Yoga Ashram, and from St Ann’s Special School in Adelaide to Knox Grammar on Sydney’s north shore. No one can say this has been a witch hunt against the Catholic Church or the former archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell. Nor can we escape the conclusion that abuse is possible in any institution where people have power over the vulnerable, no matter its trusted reputation.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Salem News

Sunday, March 22, 2015 1

BY JULIE MANGANIS STAFF WRITER

IPSWICH — A North Shore man who was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest while attending a summer camp in Ipswich in the early 1980s has now filed a civil suit.

The suit, filed last month, seeks damages from the retired Rev. Richard McCormick, 73, for assault, battery and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

The victim is identified in court papers as “John Doe,” but his attorney confirmed that it is the same victim who testified against McCormick during his criminal trial last year.

It comes three months after McCormick, a member of the Salesian order of priests, was sentenced to eight to 10 years in state prison following his conviction for raping the same victim back in the early 1980s at the former Sacred Heart Retreat in Ipswich.

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GUAM
KUAM

By Jolene Toves

It was last week KUAM first brought you the story about the arrest of a Fr. Luis Camacho, who was the priest for the San Dimas and San Dionisio churches. The priest was arrested on allegations of custodial interference after he was found with a 17-year-old female minor in a parked car at a beach in Agat. The teenager was supposed to be in school at the time. KUAM News has confirmed that one day after his arrest a report was filed by Deacon Stephen Martinez with Archbishop Anthony Apuron and Child Protective Services alleging that Fr. Luis had “sexual contact” with the minor.

“It is my belief, based on information that has been brought to my attention, that sexual abuse has occurred,” stated Deacon Martinez.

In an interview with KUAM, Deacon Martinez says he was obligated to file the report based on the Archdiocese’s Policy on Sexual Misconduct. The report alleges Fr. Luis illegally transported the 17-year-old girl from her school without her parent’s permission. He went on to state that Fr. Luis had the minor hide as they drove away from the school.”He then drove minor child to Subway and then to a remote beach in Agat and had sexual contact with her, and that the GPD had arrested Fr. Luis,” Deacon Martinez wrote in the report.

In response to the report, Archdiocese of Agana’s Sexual Abuse Response Coordinator Deacon Larry Claros told KUAM that, “a canonical investigation is underway and I have done my part as the SARC in coordinating the investigation. It now lies with the Attorney General’s office.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY JOANNE FLEMING – 23 MARCH 2015

A former Sinn Fein councillor has launched a scathing attack on the party in a dramatic resignation speech.

Brendan Curran, who later became an independent councillor, alleged Sinn Fein once forced him to “drop the issue” of an alleged paedophile priest because it was “negative campaigning”.

He also accused the party of being operated in parts by a “small, domineering clique who try to remove opposition by gang mentality”.

Mr Curran left Sinn Fein in November, 2013. He served on Newry and Mourne District council for 30 years and made the allegations during his resignation speech at a council meeting.

Speaking afterwards, Mr Curran said the sexual abuse allegations he had raised a number of years ago were of a historical nature.
“The priest is now dead,” he said. “He worked in Co Down and internationally.”

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COLOMBIA
HSB Noticias

Domingo, Marzo 22, 2015

En dos operativos diferentes, la Policía Metropolitana de Medellín dio con la captura de un comerciante y un sacerdote, quienes eran buscados por las autoridades para responder por los delitos de acceso carnal violento en menor de edad.

El primero de ellos se presentó en el sector de la Alpujarra, donde se procedió a realizar la captura, ordenada el 2 de octubre de 2014, de Víctor Manuel Torres González, un sacerdote y administrador parroquial oriundo de Santa Rosa de Viterbo (Boyacá), por el delito de actos sexuales con menor de 14 años en concurso homogéneo y sucesivo el 12 de agosto de 2013.

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COLOMBIA
Colombia Reports

Police in Colombia’s second largest city, Medellin, on Saturday arrested a priest for the alleged sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy.

According to the prosecution, the priest led a church in Los Pinos, a neighborhood in the affluent Las Americas district in the west of the city.

He was arrested on Saturday and surrendered to prosecution officials who will proceed with the trial.

The latest case of alleged child abuse by clerics adds to the “four or five” existing cases of alleged sexual abuse by priests, according to Colombia’s Catholic Church itself.

Secular entities have not made any pronunciations over the prevalence of sexual abuse of minors.

The Catholic Church that globally has faced a wave of criticism over the acts of pedophilia by clerics and the subsequent intended cover-up of many by church authorities.

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CHILE
Soy Osorno

Una reunión con los funcionarios del obispado de Osorno sostendrá mañana el recién asumido obispo de Osorno Juan Barros Madrid. La actividad se prevé cerca de las 9 de la mañana. Dicha instancia servirá además para coordinar la agenda semanal del quinto obispo de la diócesis.

Los funcionarios del obispado de Osorno ingresan a sus actividades a las 8.30 horas y está contemplado un desayuno de trabajo donde se conocerán las labores que realizan los nueve funcionarios administrativos y encargados de las diferentes áreas en el obispado.

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CHILE
Puranoticia

[The newly installed Osomo bishop, Juan Barros, will meet Monday with officials of the bishopric. As reported on soyosomo.cl, the meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. and the purpose is to coordinate the bishop’s weekly schedule.]

El recién asumido obispo de Osorno, monseñor Juan Barros, sostendrá este lunes una reunión con los funcionarios del obispado.

Según informó soyosorno.cl, el encuentro se realizará cerca de las 9 de la mañana. El propósito de la reunión es coordinar la agenda semanal del obispo Barros.

Los funcionarios del obispado de Osorno ingresan a sus actividades a las 8.30 horas y está contemplado un desayuno de trabajo con monseñor Barros donde se conocerán las labores que realizan los nueve funcionarios administrativos y encargados de las diferentes áreas en el obispado.

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CHILE
La Republica

Santiago de Chile, 22 mar (EFE).- El nuevo obispo de la ciudad chilena Osorno, Juan Barros, que asumió este sábado en medio de protestas y de una gran polémica por un presunto encubrimiento de abusos sexuales cometidos por otro sacerdote, no asistió hoy a su primera misa dominical de la Catedral San Mateo.

Según el portal SoyTemuco, unas 40 personas asistieron este domingo a la eucaristía de las 10.00 hora local (14.00 GMT), misa que finalmente fue celebrada por el religioso Mauricio Bello.

Barros soportó el sábado durante toda su accidentada eucaristía la protesta de cientos de personas que se apostaron en las afueras de la Catedral San Mateo de Osorno y de otros tantos que lograron ingresar hasta el templo donde le gritaron en todo momento “pedófilo” y “fuera”.

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CHILE
La Nacion

[The new bishop of Osorno, Juan Barros, who took over Saturday amid protests and a big controversy over an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse by the priest Fernando Karadima, did not attend Sunday Mass at the San Mateo Cathedral. The Mass was attended by about 40 faithful who heard the ceremony held by the priest Mauricio Bello, according to the SoyTemuco portal.]

El nuevo obispo de Osorno, Juan Barros, que asumió el sábado en medio de protestas y de una gran polémica por un presunto encubrimiento de abusos sexuales cometidos por el sacerdote Fernando Karadima, no asistió este domingo a la primera misa dominical de la Catedral San Mateo.

A la eucaristía asistieron alrededor de 40 fieles, quienes escucharon la ceremonia efectuada por el sacerdote Mauricio Bello, según informó el portal SoyTemuco.

Barros enfrentó el sábado durante toda su eucaristía de asunción la protesta de cientos de personas que se apostaron en las afueras de la Catedral San Mateo de Osorno y de otros tantos que lograron ingresar hasta el templo donde le gritaron en todo momento “pedófilo” y “fuera”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Police investigating historical child abuse allegations have been handed new claims relating to late Labour MP Leo Abse and ex-speaker George Thomas.

The allegations were made to South Wales Police and have been passed to another force, the BBC understands.

Mr Abse, a gay rights champion and ex-Labour MP, died in 2008, aged 91.

Last year, police said they were investigating allegations Mr Thomas – a Labour MP and ex-Commons Speaker who died in 1997 – abused a boy, aged 9.

The Sunday Times reported that the fresh claims are understood to have been passed to officers leading an investigation into an alleged “network of politicians”.

It says a Church of England review into historical sexual abuse had also passed Mr Abse’s name to detectives from Operation Fernbridge – a Met Police inquiry into alleged child abuse involving senior politicians.

Last year, South Wales Police confirmed officers were investigating claims against Mr Thomas – who later became Viscount Tonypandy – dating back to the 1960s and 1970s.

An alleged victim, who now lives in Australia, told the Mirror newspaper he had been raped by the late MP.

Viscount Tonypandy, a Methodist preacher, held the role of Secretary of State for Wales from 1968 to 1970 and was Commons Speaker between 1976 and 1983.

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PERU
La Republica

Jason Day

[“Since his election we have put all our hope in Pope Francis” is the prayer that opens the statement that this week has launched in the media by Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and José Andrés Murillo. What unites these three men of such different personalities and lives is their contempt for impunity, extreme courage and a deep sense of justice and responsibility.

They were victims of Father Karadima and decided to break the silence of conservative Santiago de Chile to unmask the powerful elites who protected the Chilean priest. It has been a struggle against gravity, against a robust system whose roots were securely anchored in the highest social and economic spheres of Chile. A hypocrisy that serves as the foundation for the more conservative wing of his country, he has been hit hard. And they have done with one objective: that justice is done and that the sexual abuse they are victims and survivors, he never exercised against any other child or adolescent.]

“Desde su elección hemos puesto toda nuestra esperanza en el Papa Francisco”, es la oración con la que abre el comunicado que esta semana han lanzado a los medios de comunicación Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton y José Andrés Murillo. Lo que une a estos tres hombres de personalidades y vidas tan diferentes es su desprecio por la impunidad, su extrema valentía y un profundo sentido de justicia y responsabilidad.

Ellos fueron víctimas del Padre Karadima y decidieron romper el silencio en la conservadora Santiago de Chile para desenmascarar al poderoso sacerdote que las élites chilenas adoraban y protegían. Ha sido una lucha contra la gravedad, contra un sistema robusto cuyas raíces se encontraban ancladas y aseguradas en las más altas esferas sociales y económicas de Chile. A la hipocresía que sirve de cimiento para el sector más conservador de su país, le han golpeado duro. Y lo han hecho con un objetivo: que se haga justicia y que el abuso sexual del que fueron víctimas y son sobrevivientes, no se ejerza jamás contra ningún otro niño o adolescente.

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CHILE
Latina Press

Mindestens 650 Demonstranten (Angaben der Polizei) haben am Samstag (21.) im Süden Chiles versucht die Weihe eines katholischen Bischofs zu stoppen. Sie beschuldigten ihn der Vertuschung des sexuellen Missbrauchs seines Mentors Fernando Karadima Farina (84) an Jugendlichen. Bischof Juan Barros Madrid (58) soll demnach seine Position genutzt haben, um Untersuchungen hinsichtlich der sexuellen Übergriffe verzögert/vertuscht zu haben.

Barros war ein Schützling von Pater Karadima, der jahrzehntelang (1950er-Jahre bis 2006) in der Hauptstadt Santiago de Chile in der Jugendarbeit tätig war und regelmäßig die Messe zelebrierte. Im Februar 2011 hatte der Vatikan Karadima schuldig des sexuelles Missbrauchs an Kindern befunden. Der Heilige Stuhl forderte ihn zu einem Leben in “Buße und Gebet” in einem Kloster in Santiago auf. Monate später eröffnete ein Richter ein Strafverfahren gegen ihn und sprach ihn der angeblichen Verbrechen schuldig, die er viele Jahre zuvor begangen hatte. Kurz darauf stellte ein weltliches Strafgericht in der chilenischen Hauptstadt ein Verfahren wegen Verjährung ein.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

[with video]

William D. Lindsey

Yesterday, Rolando mentioned in a comment here that he misses hearing from Jerry Slevin. I told Rolando that I suspect he’s far from the only reader of this blog who watches for an opportunity to read anything Jerry writes, and I reminded him that Jerry posts continuously at his Christian Catholicism site. Here’s the opening section of a posting Jerry has just made there about the revolt of Catholics in Chile after Pope Francis appointed Juan Barros, who has been accused of helping other priests cover up abuse of children, the new bishop of Osnoro:

Pope Francis is publicly and disappointingly increasing the gap between his noble words and his less noble deeds. As he faced a major Catholic revolt in Chile over his inexplicable appointment of a bishop allegedly linked to the abuse scandal there, he and his staff carefully avoided publicly acknowledging the Chilean revolt, a major turning point. Instead, in another subject changing whirlwind trip, to Naples this time, the pope pontificated on the usual “safer suspects” like the Mafia, immigration, gossip and poor workers. His compliant media entourage avoided pressing the Chilean revolt subject with the pope and his media machine.

Francis’ opportunistic “media groupies” may love him, but Latino parents seem to have reached their limit. Chilean parents understand, better apparently than the celibate Vatican and some of the seemingly clueless childless among the media, Nelson Mandela’s reported wise words, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children.” …

The video at the head of the posting is the You Tube video to which Jerry’s link above points, uploaded by a user named soyosorno. What strikes me about the video: all those hierarchical figures and priests, all those men, marching with stolid determination through crowds shouting at them, in some cases, engaging them, even pulling on their sleeves, asking that they stop the charade.

That they stop and listen.

They do not intend to stop. They do not intend to listen. They intend to carry out their program, no matter what. No matter what the people of God, who are obviously . . . well, energized here . . . say to them. No matter how many members of the people of God, who constitute the church, ask them to engage in respectful, meaningful conversation with us.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Betty Clermont

Hagiographies of Jorge Mario Bergoglio may soon obliterate what was written before the media-created Pope Francis Superstar. This is an effort to preserve this information along with some background as to what took place during the Argentine dictatorship and why. Part II is here.

Catholic Hierarchs Support the Junta

All European fascist governments and movements, except the latter German Nazis, were supported by the Catholic Church.

Austrian Bishop Hudal’s ratline concentrated on assisting highly-placed German and Austrian officers to escape post-war prosecution but others paid their way into the ratline. War criminals such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Franz Stangl, Alois Brunner and Walter Rauff sailed from Genoa to Barcelona and on to Buenos Aires. (Michael Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War)

Numerically, the largest ratline was operated by Vatican agent and Croatian Ustasha priest, Krunoslav Draganovic, and “reveals the direct involvement of Pope Pius XII himself,” according to Phayer. The Catholic Ustasha executed, tortured, starved, buried alive and burned to death 750,000 Croatian and Bosnian Serbs, Jews and Roma between 1941 and 1945 with the full knowledge of Pius XII. After the collapse of the Nazi-puppet Ustasha regime, Draganovic established escape routes for Croatian war criminals, mostly to South America.

Juan Peron, who had trained under Mussolini, came to power in Argentina in the spring of 1943 assisted by Fifth Column activity organized by SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg. In 1946, the archbishop of Freiburg told a U.S. military interrogator that he “considered the SS to be the most respectable of the Nazi Party organizations.” (Charles Higham, American Swastika: The Shocking Story of Nazi Collaborators in Our Midst from 1933 to the Present Day)

“The Vatican, naturally, backed Peron completely.” (Phayer)

Peron welcomed these war criminals to Argentina. “An American diplomat working in the Buenos Aires embassy wrote to the State Department deploring the fact that ‘the Vatican and Argentina [are conniving] to get guilty people to haven in latter country.’” (John Moors Cabot, June 11, 1947, cited by Phayer)

“Investigators of the central war criminal authority in Germany estimated 9,000 war criminals escaped to South America, including Croatians, Ukrainians, Russians and western Europeans who aided the Nazi slaughter. Most, perhaps as many as 5,000, went to Argentina….Of particular interest to the investigators were the passports provided by the Vatican.”

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Betty Clermont

Hagiographies of Jorge Mario Bergoglio may soon obliterate what was written before the media -created Pope Francis Superstar. This is an effort to preserve this information along with some background as to what took place during the Argentine dictatorship. Part I is here.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio Elected Pope March 13, 2013

TalkingPointsMemo, March 13:

“…..Bergoglio almost never granted media interviews, limiting himself to speeches from the pulpit, and was reluctant to contradict his critics, even when he knew their allegations against him were false, said Rubin [co-author of The Jesuit].

That attitude was burnished as human rights activists tried to force him to answer uncomfortable questions about what Church officials knew and did about the dictatorship’s abuses after the 1976 coup.

Many Argentines remain angry over the church’s acknowledged failure to openly confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate ‘subversive elements’ in society. It’s one reason why more than two-thirds of Argentines describe themselves as Catholic, but fewer than 10 percent regularly attend Mass.

Under Bergoglio’s leadership, Argentina’s bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the Church’s failures to protect its flock. But the statement blamed the era’s violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies.

‘Bergoglio has been very critical of human rights violations during the dictatorship, but he has always also criticized the leftist guerrillas; he doesn’t forget that side,’ Rubin said….

Bergoglio twice invoked his right under Argentine law to refuse to appear in open court, and when he eventually did testify in 2010, his answers were evasive, human rights attorney Myriam Bregman said.
At least two cases directly involved Bergoglio. One examined the torture of two of his Jesuit priests — Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics — who were kidnapped in 1976 from the slums where they advocated liberation theology. Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the regime that he endorsed their work. Jalics refused to discuss it after moving into seclusion in a German monastery.

Both men were freed after Bergoglio took extraordinary, behind-the-scenes action to save them — including persuading dictator Jorge Videla’s family priest to call in sick so that he could say Mass in the junta leader’s home, where he privately appealed for mercy. His intervention likely saved their lives, but Bergoglio never shared the details until Rubin interviewed him for the 2010 biography.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis is publicly and disappointingly increasing the gap between his noble words and his less noble deeds. As he faced a major Catholic revolt in Chile over his inexplicable appointment of a bishop allegedly linked to the abuse scandal there, he and his staff carefully avoided publicly acknowledging the Chilean revolt, a major turning point. Instead, in another subject changing whirlwind trip, to Naples this time, the pope pontificated on the usual “safer suspects” like the Mafia, immigration, gossip and poor workers. His compliant media entourage avoided pressing the Chilean revolt subject with the pope and his media machine.

Francis’ opportunistic “media groupies” may love him, but Latino parents seem to have reached their limit. Chilean parents understand, better apparently than the celibate Vatican and some of the seemingly clueless childless among the media, Nelson Mandela’s reported wise words, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children.”

As the scandal cover-up revelations evidently contributed to the ex-Pope’s hasty exit, Pope Francis is facing, badly, his own out of control abuse scandal crisis recently. It is becoming increasingly clear that neither any pope nor any limited group of bishops can cure a Catholic Church suffering seriously from pervasive sexual abuse scandals. The pope should follow Good Pope John’s experienced and wise lead and convene a general ecumenical council as promptly as practicable. No pope alone, even an infallible one, can repair the continuing damage, especially a pope whose record as cardinal and pope on holding priests and bishops accountable on credible claims of sex abuse and related cover-ups is as questionable as Pope Francis’ record appears to be.

An online video of the unprecedented Chilean protest shows the Catholic crowd throwing objects at Bishop Barros, pushing and shoving him and other bishops (some visibly frightened), and trying to stop him from entering St. Matthew’s Cathedral, despite strong security measures. See the extraordinary pictures here,

[Pubimetro]

and the remarkable video of outraged Catholics here,

[YouTube]

While Barros himself is not accused of molestation, at least three credible victims say he was present when they were sexually molested by powerful Fr. Fernando Karadima in the 1980s and 90s. “I hold the Pope responsible,” said Juan Carlos Cruz, a 51-year-old journalist who is one of the accusers of Barros. “This contradicts everything the Pope has said. He was aware of the situation but named [Barros as bishop] anyway,” Cruz told reporters. “We were accustomed to getting slapped in the face by the Catholic Church [in Chile], but getting slapped by the Pope himself is the saddest part. …”, Cruz reportedly added. (my emphasis)

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

March 2015 By Keir Mudie

As the Sunday People leads the way in uncovering a sickening network of child abusers in Westminster, we look at how the cases are connected

Since Labour MP Tom Watson stood up in the Commons in October 2012 to ask Prime Minister David Cameron to probe a high-powered ­paedophile ring with links to Number 10, the Sunday People has led the way.

We have produced a string of exclusive stories tracking the progress of Operation Fairbank and its offshoots.

Shocking revelations about the Elm Guest House dominated the early part of our investigation as traumatised victims came forward.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

21 March 2015 By Nick Dorman , Mark Williams-Thomas

The former Met Police officer says a vice squad cop told him an investigation into Establishment figures was axed for reasons of national security

A royal was in a suspected paedophile ring being investigated by police before an Establishment cover up, it was claimed.

A former Metropolitan Police officer said he was told a member of the Queen’s family and an MP had both been identified as part of a major child abuse inquiry.

But the operation is said to have been shut down by the Crown Prosecution Service for national security reasons.

The claim came as the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner made a fresh appeal for victims of historic child sex abuse to come forward, and vowed: “We’ll go where the evidence takes us.”

The ex-officer told the Sunday Mirror how a named detective sergeant based at London’s Marylebone police station in the late 1980s spoke to him about the investigation and the fact it had been axed.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A new Catholic bishop of Arundel and Brighton has been appointed after his predecessor resigned.

Bishop Richard Moth will be installed in his new role in May.

The previous bishop, the Rt Rev Kieran Conry, stepped down last September after he said he had been “unfaithful” to his promises as a Catholic priest and brought “shame” on the diocese, which covers Sussex and Surrey.

An inquiry into his resignation is still ongoing, the diocese said.

Bishop Moth, who will leave his current role as Bishop of the Forces, was born in Chingola, Zambia, in 1958 and brought up in Kent.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

by Adrian Imms

THE Pope has appointed a new bishop for Arundel and Brighton.

Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Richard Moth, currently Bishop of the Forces, as Bishop of Arundel & Brighton.

Bishop Richard replaces Kieran Conry who, as reported in The Argus last September, had been “unfaithful to [his] promises as a Catholic priest”.

Mr Conry resigned the day before claims in a national newspaper that he had written a love letter to a married woman, who is claimed to have spent several nights at his home.

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CHILE
El Tribuno

La iglesia chilena concretó ayer la asunción como obispo de Osorno de Juan Barros, acusado de encubrir abusos sexuales, una designación del Papa Francisco que provocó el rechazo de laicos y religiosos que resisten el nombramiento.

La elección del sacerdote Barros en enero fue cuestionada de inmediato por sus vinculaciones con el sacerdote Fernando Karadima, un influyente formador de obispos que el Vaticano declaró culpable de abusos sexuales retirándolo a “una vida de oración y penitencia”.

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CHILE
La Razon

[A new bishop in Chile is accused of protecting a rapist.]

La Razón (Edición Impresa) / AFP / Osorno (Chile)
22 de marzo de 2015

Unas 600 personas se apostaron ayer en el frontis de la catedral de Osorno, Chile, para protestar contra la asunción del cura Juan Barros como obispo de la Diócesis de esa ciudad, debido a las acusaciones de encubrimiento de abusos sexuales.

Muchos de ellos, vestidos de negro y portando cientos de globos negros, esperaron pacientemente la llegada de Barros al recinto, arribo que finalmente hizo por una de las puertas posteriores del templo para evitar los abucheos.

La catedral San Mateo de Osorno amaneció este sábado rodeada de policías, quienes resguardan la seguridad en el sector, pero no pudieron evitar que decenas de personas que se manifestaban en las afueras de la iglesia ingresaran al interior.

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CHILE
La Capital

El designado obispo de la ciudad chilena de Osorno, Juan Barros, asumió ayer oficialmente su cargo en medio de protestas de fieles que aseguran que el sacerdote encubrió actos de pedofilia.

Osorno está a 945 kilómetros al sur de Santiago de Chile, y a 232 kilómetros al oeste de San Carlos de Bariloche.

“Juan Barros, no somos tu rebaño”, lo abucheó un grupo de manifestantes, estimado en más de 600 personas, según informó la policía que desde temprano desplegó un fuerte contingente para resguardar el orden en las afueras de la catedral San Mateo, donde se realizó al ceremonia de asunción al cargo, una celebración inusualmente breve en la que el flamante prelado pronunció solo las oraciones de fórmula, sin dar un sermón.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Sun

Former Archbishop Kenneth (Seraphim) Storheim escaped being defrocked at the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church spring session.

Storheim was found guilty of one count of sexually molesting a young boy, but cleared of a charge of molesting his twin brother, in incidents that happened nearly 30 years ago and sentenced to eight months in jail on Jan. 24, 2014

“In closed session, the Holy Synod reviewed a number of clergy cases, including that of Archbishop Seraphim,” said a Synod of Bishops spring session report. “Having thoroughly reviewed the report of the Synodal Commission in this regard, procedures and a date for the convening a spiritual court were reviewed, with a committee of three Bishops appointed to develop appropriate procedures.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Sunday Times

Tom Harper Home Affairs Correspondent Published: 22 March 2015

LEO ABSE, the flamboyant, late Welsh Labour MP, is being investigated by police on suspicion of child abuse.

Documents from South Wales police reveal that allegations against the long-serving politician, who died in 2008 aged 91, are being examined by another force.

The investigation is understood to centre on an alleged “politicians’ network” involving Abse’s close friend George Thomas, the former Labour Speaker of the House of Commons.

Last year it emerged that Thomas, who died in 1997, was being investigated for raping a nine-year-old boy in Cardiff in the late 1960s.

Scotland Yard refused to confirm or deny whether it was involved in the Abse inquiry.

The Sunday Times has also established that a Church of England review into historic sexual abuse has passed Abse’s name to detectives from Operation Fernbridge, a Metropolitan police inquiry into an alleged Westminster VIP pedophile network.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Christian minister teaches churches to guard against pedophiles — like his father

By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In his growing work of consulting with churches on matters of sexual abuse, Jimmy Hinton says he hears a common refrain.

If a devoted member of a congregation is accused, members will give all kinds of reasons “it just can’t be him,” he says.

The accused is so kind and nice. He’s a family man. He never cusses.

“At the end of that,” Mr. Hinton says, he tells them: “You just described in great detail my father.”

The father, John Wayne Hinton, whom he watched with admiration as he preached the gospel from the pulpit of Somerset Church of Christ, a small evangelical congregation where the elder Hinton was minister for 27 years until 2001.

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UNITED STATES
Lifesite

Matt Fradd

It is interesting to note that since the advent of the Internet and the invention of the web browser, some statistics suggest that rape rates have actually declined.

In fact, some claim that states in the U.S. that adopted the Internet more quickly have seen a greater and faster decline of rape than other states. For many people, this makes a lot of sense: if you are the kind of guy who is inclined to want to rape a woman, perhaps sitting at home in front of your laptop more or less gets it out of your system, making you less inclined to commit rape.

But I’m skeptical that easy access to porn is what has resulted in less rape. We should not confuse correlation with causation. That is, just because two things are correlated, it does not follow that one caused the other (the rooster is not the cause of the sun’s rising).

The supposed decline in rape rates could be due to a number of factors, like greater measures being put in place to protect women, or, more education about rape.

Second—and this is a big one—the claim that rape is actually on the decline, as reported by the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), may simply be false. Many organizations have criticized their findings, saying they were based on poor data collection. The National Women’s Study, the National College Women Sexual Victimization Study, the National Violence Against Women Study, and the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence survey all report higher rates of rape and sexual assault than the NCVS.

I am of the opinion that the evidence points, rather, to the opposite: not that men who watch porn all become rapists—that is patently false, no one is arguing that—but that porn shapes how men see women, and when you have a whole culture of men who are fed on porn, you create a culture where women become sexual commodities, which is an ideal environment for sexual abuse to flourish.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

March 22, 2015

By Peter Smith / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Many religious congregations have been seeking help to navigate new state laws requiring more training on child abuse and mandating more people report suspected abuse.

Some want to know what the law requires of volunteers and paid staff. Others want training in recognizing the symptoms of abuse. Others have a crisis and need immediate help — what to do about a new allegation of abuse or a sex offender who wants to attend church.

Such growing awareness is good, but only a start, said Michelle Snyder, executive director of the Pittsburgh Pastoral Institute, an interfaith agency that provides counseling services and training for religious organizations.

“There’s a way the legislation is unhelpful if it takes our eyes off the spirit and onto the details,” she said, “as opposed to these larger conversations of, ‘Who do we really want to be, and what is our theology of safe church, and how do we create havens?’ ”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Independent

Michael Browne
PUBLISHED
22/03/2015

A former leading IRA man, who was a security chief for X Factor boss, Simon Cowell has accused Sinn Fein of helping to cover up the sexual abuse of “hundreds” of schoolboys by a now-deceased priest.

Brendan Curran, a former Irish Army-trained sniper – who was jailed aged 18 in 1973 for 15 years for attempting to murder a British soldier – made the sensational claims as he announced his resignation from Newry and Mourne District Council at a meeting last week.

Mr Curran said he was prevented 10 years ago from exposing the allegations by a leading well-known Sinn Fein figure.

Speaking to the Sunday Independent after the tumultuous council meeting, Mr Curran said: “This priest is dead now, but he was in every school in the Newry area for years and abused children in every one of them. People have been coming forward.”

“I raised it with the Republican movement 10 years ago and was told to drop it; it was a negative story, to drop it; it was a negative issue.”

Mr Curran added: “The leadership was aware of this being raised.”

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CHILE
euronews

Newly named bishop of Osorno in Chile Juan Barros was pushed and shoved by demonstrators carrying black balloons as he squeezed through the crowd in Saint Matthew’s Church.

Many Chilean Catholics say Barros covered up the sexual abuse of children committed by his superior Fr. Fernando Karadima Farina in the 1980s and ’90s.

Karadima was found guilty by the Vatican in 2011.

While Barros himself is not accused of molestation, at least three victims of sex abuse say he was present when they were molested by Karadima in the 1980s and 90s.

Angry protesters shouted at Barros to “get out” during the mass ordaining him. He had to be escorted out of the building by police after the service.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Catholic News

Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Richard Moth, currently Bishop of the Forces, as Bishop of Arundel & Brighton.

He will be the fifth Bishop of Arundel & Brighton. Bishop Moth was ordained a priest in 1982 and served as a priest in parishes in the Archdiocese of Southwark including acting as Vicar General and Chancellor of the Archdiocese before being ordained Bishop of the Forces in September 2009. In addition to his role as Bishop of the Forces, he is Chair of Governors at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, Liaison Bishop for Prisons, Episcopal Advisor to the National Catholic Scout Fellowship and holds a brief on Mental Health on behalf of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.

Bishop Moth said: “It is a great privilege to have been appointed by Pope Francis as the new Bishop of Arundel & Brighton and I am very conscious of the trust that has been placed in me. In these last fifty years since the foundation of the Diocese, so much has been done to build up the Church and in the proclamation of the Gospel and, with God’s help, I look to guide and serve the Diocese to that same end. ”

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CITTA’ DEL VATICANO
Bolletino

Il Papa ha nominato Vescovo di Arundel and Brighton (Inghilterra) S.E. Mons. Charles Phillip Richard Moth, finora Vescovo Ordinario Militare per la Gran Bretagna.

S.E. Mons. Charles Phillip Richard Moth

S.E. Mons. Charles Phillip Richard Moth è nato l’8 luglio 1958 in Chingola (Zambia). Ha compiuto gli studi primari e secondari nelle scuole cattoliche in Kent. Ha ricevuto la formazione sacerdotale presso il seminario St. John’s in Wonersh, Surrey e, presso l’Università St. Paul di Ottawa, ha conseguito la Licenza e il Master in Diritto Canonico.

O stato ordinato sacerdote il 3 luglio 1982 per l’arcidiocesi di Southwark.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet

Six months after Kieran Conry’s resignation, Bishop of the Forces appointed to lead Arundel and Brighton

21 March 2015 by Christopher Lamb

A new Bishop of Arundel and Brighton has been appointed to succeed Kieran Conry, who resigned last September having admitted to being unfaithful to his vow of celibacy.

Pope Francis today named Bishop Richard Moth, currently Bishop of the Forces, to lead the diocese which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Bishop Emeritus Kieran Conry resigned after a newspaper revealed his intimate friendship with a married woman. Although he denied a sexual relationship with that individual he admitted he had had an affair with another woman that lasted six years.

Bishop Moth, 56, will be installed on 28 May in time to celebrate the diocese’s Golden Jubilee Mass which will take place at the Amex Stadium in Brighton, on 5 July.

Alongside his forces role, the bishop is Chairman of Governors at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, the episcopal liaison for prisons and holds a brief on mental health issues for the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. He is a priest of the Archdiocese of Southwark – where he held senior positions such as vicar general and chancellor – and has been an Oblate of the Order of St Benedict for over 30 years.

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MAINE
Courier

Ben Meiklejohn

SOUTHERN MAINE – For victims of sexual abuse, the process of healing can take years, even decades. And some survivors may live the remainder of their lives without reaching closure.

Children who are molested are taught by abusers to keep secrets. Or they are told they will be in trouble if they reveal what happened.

These are just some of the challenges faced by sexually abused children, said Julia Davidson, a sexual assault response team program manager for Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine. Davidson said she and her co-workers help survivors at all stages – by being in the hospital immediately after an incident or guiding a person through the trial process. The organization works to help survivors reach their goals, including providing access to mental health services and helping law enforcement officials prosecute abusers.

Davidson said many people call the SARSSM hotline and disclose their abuse for the first time. The most important for any person to whom abuse is being disclosed by a victim, said Davidson, is to believe them.

“The first thing we do is we tell them that we believe them and that what happened is not their fault,” Davidson said. “What we know from our work is that a primary indicator of long term public health is that a youngster is believed and supported when they try to disclose for the first time. When they’re told to get over it and move on … keeping it secret can cause longstanding trauma.”

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CHILE
Publimetro

En medio de incidentes asumió como nuevo obispo de Osorno, monseñor Juan Barros, quien es acusado de ser encubridor de Fernando Karadima, por los denunciantes de este caso.

La ceremonia se inició a las 11 horas bajo un fuerte resguardo policial, puesto que más de 400 personas llegaron a las afueras de la Catedral de la ciudad de la Décima Región, informó radio Cooperativa.

Algunos manifestantes lograron ingresar a la Catedral, impidiendo el desarrollo normal del acto, ya que se produjeron incidentes entre quienes apoyan y rechazan a Barros.

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CHILE
El Comercio

Juan Barros, de 58 años, es visto por algunos como un encubridor del mayor cura pederasta de la Iglesia chilena

En el ojo de la tormenta, la iglesia chilena concretó este sábado la asunción como obispo de Osorno del sacerdote Juan Barros -acusado de encubrir abusos sexuales- una designación del Papa Francisco que provocó el rechazo de laicos y religiosos que resisten el nombramiento.

A pesar de que la catedral de San Mateo estuvo fuertemente custodiada por policías antimotines, varios detractores de Juan Barros ingresaron al templo con globos y pancartas negras, para exigir con cánticos y gritos la renuncia del nuevo obispo de Osorno, una ciudad 930 kilómetros al sur de Santiago. En la catedral había entre 400 y 500 personas.

La ceremonia fue interrumpida en varias ocasiones por insultos y sonidos de desaprobación realizados por los detractores del religioso.

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CHILE
swissinfo

Por Anthony Esposito

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Cientos de católicos se reunieron el sábado en una iglesia de la pequeña ciudad chilena de Osorno para protestar por la designación del obispo Juan Barros, acusado de proteger a uno de los más conocidos pederastas del país.

El nombramiento desató la ira de muchos parroquianos y puso en duda la promesa del Papa Francisco de acabar con los abusos sexuales en la Iglesia.

Sus críticos dicen que Barros estaba al tanto y ayudó a encubrir los abusos del padre Fernando Karadima, cuyo caso es el más infame de varias acusaciones de pedofilia dentro de la Iglesia Católica en Chile.

En el 2011, Karadima fue hallado culpable por el Vaticano de abusar de niños adolescentes durante muchos años. Libre de cargos penales después de que la investigación en su contra naufragara por cuestiones técnicas, la Iglesia lo castigó prohibiéndole celebrar misas públicas.

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CHILE
BBC Mundo

[“Barros, out!” shouted the people who protested at the ordination of Bishop Juan Barros of the Osomo diocese in southern Chile. The town, located 850 kilometers south of the capital of Santiago, had never seen so many people protesting outside of the cathedral. More than 650 people showed up to protest, according to estimates by police.]

Constanza Hola Chamy
BBC Mundo

“Barros, ¡fuera!”, gritaba una multitud vestida de negro en pleno centro de Osorno, en el sur de Chile.

La pequeña ciudad, ubicada 850 kilómetros al sur de la capital, Santiago, nunca había visto tanta gente protestando afuera de su catedral: más de 650 personas, según estimaciones de Carabineros, la policía local.

Estaban allí para hacerle saber al nuevo obispo, Juan Barros, recientemente nombrado por el propio papa Francisco como máximo guía espiritual de la diócesis, que no lo querían. Ni en la catedral, ni en la diósesis ni en la Iglesia.

Barros ha sido cuestionado por sus vínculos con el sacerdote Fernando Karadima, a quien tanto la justicia civil como la eclesiástica consideraron responsable de abuso sexual de menores durante los 1980s y 1990s.

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CHILE
Cooperativa

[Juan Barros after taking over as bishop of Osorno: I am not a friend of Fernando Karadima.]

[con audio]

Este sábado el monseñor Juan Barros Madrid, acusado de ser encubridor de los abusos de Fernando Karadima, asumió como obispo de Osorno en una ceremonia marcada por forcejeos, gritos y protestas.

En conversación con Cooperativa, el electo líder de la Diócesis de Osorno lamentó lo sucedido y aseguró que ya no es amigo ex párroco de El Bosque: “Por supuesto que me da pena que en la santa misa en la Catedral haya ocurrido esas manifestaciones, porque la misa es lo más sagrado que tenemos”.

“Sin duda que las personas tenemos derecho a presentar nuestras discrepancias, pero cuando ya interfiere un momento sagrado, ya ahí eso da mucha pena”, manifestó.

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CHILE
Deutsche Welle

Hundreds of people have protested against the ordination of a Catholic bishop in the Chilean city of Osorno. They’ve accused him of covering up a priest’s sexual abuse of children.

Juan Barros was ordained on Saturday in the cathedral of Osorno amid the shouts of hundreds of protesters who accuse him of covering up a priest’s sexual abuse of young boys. Fifteen of the country’s 35 bishops and many priests from the diocese also shunned the ordination of the new bishop.

While Barros himself has not been accused of molestation, at least three victims of sexual abuse claim he was present when they were molested by the one of Chile’s most prominent priests, Father Fernando Karadima, in the 1980s and 1990s. A Vatican investigation found Karadima guilty of sex abuse in 2011 and sentenced the now 84-year-old man to a life of “penitence and prayer.”

In a letter sent to priests in the diocese on Monday, Barros stated that he did not know about Karadima’s abuses when they happened.

More than 1,000 Catholics, along with about 30 priests from the diocese and 51 of Chile’s 120 congress members, sent letters to Pope Francis last month urging him to revoke the appointment of Barros. However, the pope confirmed his decision to appoint Barros after recently meeting with him.

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CHILE
Bio Bio

Sacerdote Juan Barros es agredido en medio de profundo descontento tras asumir como Obispo de Osorno

[Priest Juan Barros is attacked amid deep discontent after taking over as Bishop of Osorno. After it became known that Juan Barros would be the new bishop of Osorno, despite its alleged status as “accessory” of sexual abuse by Fernando Karadima, the faithful of the Catholic Church did not hesitate to express their dissatisfaction. Protesters waited Barros at the front of the Cathedral San Mateo with black balloons and banners alluding to his role in the Karadima case. The protesters entered the cathedral with black balloons to prevent continuation of the ceremony while shouting “pedophile”. They also said they will not allow Juan Barros to stay in Osorno. Barros said he was calm and had hope for the city.]

Luego de que se conociera que Juan Barros sería el nuevo obispo de Osorno, pese a su presunta condición de “encubridor” de los abusos sexuales cometidos por Fernando Karadima, los fieles de la Iglesia Católica no dudaron en manifestar su descontento.

Manifestantes esperaban a Barros en el frontis de la Catedral San Mateo -para su oficialización-, con globos negros y pancartas que hacían alusión a su papel en el caso Karadima.

Los manifestantes entraron a la Catedral con globos negros, impidiendo que continuara la ceremonia mientras le gritaban “Pedófilo”. Además aseguraron que no permitirán que Juan Barros asuma o se quede en Osorno.

Barros aseguró que él estaba “con mucha tranquilidad” y “esperanza” en la ciudad.

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CHILE
YouTube

Published on Mar 9, 2015
Con una velatón, laicos de Osorno insistieron en rechazo a Obispo Juan Barros y pidieron conocer detalles de entrevista de Fernando Chomalí con el Papa Francisco en el Vaticano.

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CHILE
YouTube

CNN

Published on Mar 21, 2015
Tanto sacerdotes como parlamentarios firmaron una carta dirigida al Papa para solicitar su renuncia.

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CHILE
YouTube

Video

News story on ordination of Bishop Juan Barros.

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CHILE
YouTube

Video

Protesters at the ordination of Bishop Juan Barros.

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CHILE
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent March 21, 2015

NAPLES — Despite protests that ended with three people arrested, as well as a campaign asking the Vatican to revisit the decision, a Chilean bishop mentored by the country’s most notorious sex abuser priest took possession of his new diocese on Saturday.

The appointment by Pope Francis has led many observers to question the pontiff’s commitment to tackling the scandals of clerical sex abuse and hold those who stood by accountable for their inaction.

An estimated 4,000 people dressed in black as a sign of mourning gathered in front of the cathedral of the diocese of Osorno, Chile, to demand that Bishop Juan Barros Madrid, former military chaplain, not take possession.

A video of the event posted online shows the crowd throwing objects at the prelate, pushing him, and trying to stop him from entering St. Mathew’s Cathedral, despite strong security measures.

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CHILE
Bio Bio

[Juan Carlos Cruz, victim of Karadima: Juan Barros was present when he was abused.]

Luego del nombramiento de Juan Barros como Obispo de Osorno, las víctimas de Fernando Karadima hicieron notar su profundo malestar e impotencia por las decisiones que toma la Iglesia en estos casos, pasando a llevar la historia que conllevan los oscuros hechos que violación.

Juan Carlos Cruz, una de las víticmas de Fernando Karadima, reconoce que enterarse de este hecho no le provoca más que una enorme impotencia.

Desde Estados Unidos, en conversación con Radio Bío Bío, Cruz comentó que “hay muchas cosas aquí en juego (…) es un momento tan clave en la historia de Chile y en la historia de la hegemonía de la Iglesia en Chile. (…) Tenemos una conferencia episcopal que son unos cobardes que han huido como ratas en este momento, porque se dieron cuenta de que la gente no iba a estar con ellos, entonces los tres jerarcas no están presentes”.

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CHILE
Cooperativa

[Protesters interrupted each address at the Bishop Juan Barros ordination. The tense ceremony was interrupted and protesters shouts “Out!” even when the religous were praying the Ave Maria.]

Este sábado asumió Juan Barros como obispo de Osorno tras una tensa ceremonia en la que fue interrumpido en cada una de sus intervenciones. Los manifestantes gritaron “¡fuera!” incluso cuando el religioso rezaba en Ave María. Escucha cómo se vivió esta polémica toma de posesión.

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CHILE
Bio Bio

[Bishop Juan Barros denied accusations: “I think I expressed the truth and ask you to believe me.”]

Publicado por Carlos Villavicencio

El sacerdote Juan Barros asumió este sábado como Obispo de Osorno en medio de la polémica por su designación, luego de que se le vinculase como “encubridor” de Fernando Karadima en hechos de pedofilia.

Un grupo de manifestantes llegó hasta la catedral de Osorno para expresar su descontento, generando enfrentamientos en plena ceremonia.

Sobre las denuncias en su contra, el Obispo dijo que “en la declaración que hice yo creo que expresé la verdad y les pido que me crean. Con toda sinceridad y dolor expresé ahí lo que he vivido y lo que le puedo presentar a la comunidad”.

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CHILE
El Pais

Unas 650 personas protestaron el sábado frente a la catedral de Osorno, en el sur de Chile, durante la ceremonia en que Juan Barros asumió como obispo de la diósesis.

Barros ha sido cuestionado por sus vínculos con el sacerdote Fernando Karadima, condenado por abusos sexuales. Los denunciantes de Karadima aseguran que Barros estaba al tanto de las denuncias y encubrió al sacerdote, acusaciones que el nuevo obispo de Osorno niega.

Los manifestantes esperaron a Barros en el frontis de la catedral, vestidos de negro, con globos negros y pancartas.

Algunos empujaron al sacerdote durante su ingreso e incluso llegaron a botarlo, según testigos.

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CHILE
CTV (Canada)

Eva Vergara, The Associated Press
Published Saturday, March 21, 2015

SANTIAGO, Chile — A bishop was ordained in southern Chile on Saturday amid shouts and scuffles between supporters and protesters who accuse him of covering up crimes of a mentor the Vatican has sanctioned for abusing young boys.

Riot police protected the 58-year-old Rev. Juan Barros as he left the ceremony at the cathedral of San Mateo in the city of Osorno.

Thousands of churchgoers dressed in the black of mourning protested outside the church and a few made their way inside, despite police efforts to keep them out. Even inside the cathedral, supporters of Barros scuffled with opponents who shouted denunciations.

Only 15 of the country’s 35 bishops and many priests from the diocese also shunned the ordination of their new bishop — a service without communion that was cut short after half an hour.

While Barros himself is not accused of molestation, at least three victims of sex abuse say he was present when they were molested by the Rev. Fernando Karadima in the 1980s and 90s.

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CHILE
BBC News

Protesters in southern Chile have tried to stop the ordination of a Catholic bishop, accusing him of covering up a priest’s sexual abuse of young boys.

Police in the city of Osorno said at least 650 people turned up at the cathedral wearing black in protest against the ordination of Juan Barros.

The protesters say Bishop Barros used his position in the Church to try to deter an investigation into the actions of his mentor, Fernando Karadima.

Bishop Barros denies the allegations.

Last Monday he sent a letter to priests saying: “I never had knowledge of, or could have imagined, the serious abuses that this priest committed against the victims.”

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CHILE
swissinfo

MAR 21, 2015 – 20:27
By Anthony Esposito

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Black balloons in hand, hundreds of Catholics gathered at a church in the small Chilean city of Osorno on Saturday to protest the appointment of bishop Juan Barros, accused of protecting one of the nation’s most notorious paedophiles.

The appointment has sparked outrage from many parishioners and puts into question Pope Francis’ promise to rid the church of sex abuse.

Critics say Barros was aware and helped cover up abuse by Father Fernando Karadima, whose case is the most infamous of a number of allegations of paedophilia within the Catholic church in Chile.

In 2011, Santiago-based Karadima was found guilty by the Vatican of abusing teenage boys over many years. Freed from criminal prosecution after the case against him collapsed for technical reasons, the church punished him by banning him from celebrating public mass.

Karadima was a mentor to a number of younger priests, including Barros.

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CHILE
Chronicle Bulletin

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A bishop was ordained in southern Chile on Saturday amid riot police and shouting protesters who accuse him of covering up crimes of a mentor the Vatican has sanctioned for abusing young boys.

Hundreds of churchgoers dressed in the black of mourning denounced the 58-year-old Rev. Juan Barros as he took more than as bishop of the southern city of Osorno. Quite a few named for him to instantly resign.

Police had to escort Barros out of the church immediately after his ordination, which was attended by only 15 of the country’s 35 bishops and about 20 of the 35 priests in the diocese some 580 miles (930 kilometers) south of Santiago.

Though Barros himself is not accused of molestation, at least 3 victims of sex abuse say he was present when they have been molested by the Rev. Fernando Karadima in the 1980s and 90s.

The controversy has been closely watched by victims, advocacy groups and lawmakers as a test of Pope Francis’ promises to crack down on clerical sex abuse.

“I hold the Pope accountable,” stated Juan Carlos Cruz, a 51-year-old journalist who is 1 of the accusers.

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CHILE
La Jormada

Santiago. En un suceso prácticamente inédito por décadas, el repudio a un obispo nombrado inexplicablemente por el Vaticano en la ciudad sureña de Osorno, se transformó en pugilatos callejeros que continuaron al interior del templo de San Mateo y tuvieron su epílogo frente al altar mayor y el prelado tuvo que protagonizar una vergonzosa huida por una puerta lateral.

La ceremonia estaba programada originalmente para las 11:00 horas, pero los pugilatos retrasaron su inicio, en medio del resguardo de un numeroso contingente policial, que resultó impotente.

Barros es acusado por religiosos y laicos de encubridor y cómplice del sacerdote Fernando Karadima, condenado canónicamente por abusos sexuales y como financista de la policía secreta dictatorial DINA. El religioso aseguró que jamás supo de esos hechos en la elegante parroquia de El Bosque, de Santiago, donde el pedófilo sacaba dinero para el infame y encarcelado ex general Manuel Contrerasfa, a sus beatas millonarias.

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CHILE
La Tercera

por Pablo Cádiz – 21/03/2015

En medio de un ambiente polarizado y de incidentes, Juan Barros asumió como obispo de Osorno. La ceremonia -originalmente fijada para las 11.00- comenzó con retraso, ya que un grupo de personas intentó impedir el ingreso del sacerdote. La investidura se vio interrumpida en varias oportunidades por manifestantes que gritaban “fuera”, una y otra vez.

Los cuestionamientos a Barros apuntan a sus vínculos con Fernando Karadima, quien recibió una condena canónica por abusos sexuales. Fueron los denunciantes del ex párroco de El Bosque los que iniciaron una fuerte ofensiva, en la que acusaron a Barros de haber encubierto los delitos de Karadima.

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CHILE
Excelsior

SANTIAGO, 21 de marzo.- Con inéditos enfrentamientos y gritos entre partidarios y detractores, dentro y fuera de la catedral de Osorno, asumió el sábado el nuevo obispo Juan Barros, visto por algunos como un encubridor del mayor cura pederasta de la Iglesia chilena.

Tras asumir, Barros abandonó la catedral custodiado por efectivos antimotines, mientras en las afueras unas 4 mil personas -muchas portando globos negros o vestidos de ese color en señal de luto- demandaban la renuncia del clérigo de 58 años. Simultáneamente, algunos conductores en caravanas de automóviles con pancartas también exigían su salida.

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CHILE
The New York Times

By PASCALE BONNEFOY
MARCH 21, 2015

SANTIAGO, Chile — Hundreds of demonstrators dressed in black barged into a cathedral in southern Chile on Saturday and interrupted the installation ceremony for the city’s new Roman Catholic bishop, Juan Barros, whom they accuse of complicity in a notorious case of clerical sexual abuse, blocking his passage and shouting, “Barros, get out of the city!”

The scene inside the Cathedral San Mateo de Osorno was chaotic, with television images showing clashes between Barros opponents, carrying black balloons, and Barros supporters, carrying white ones. Radio reports said several protesters tried to climb onto the altar where Bishop Barros was standing. After the ceremony, he left the cathedral through a side door escorted by police special forces. Outside, about 3,000 people, including local politicians and members of Congress held signs and chanted demands that he resign.

Weeks of protests, candlelight vigils and letters to Pope Francis were not enough to persuade him to rescind his decision in January to appoint Bishop Barros to lead the Diocese of Osorno, 570 miles south of the capital, Santiago. Bishop Barros was a close associate of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a prominent Santiago priest whom the Vatican found guilty of sexual abuse in 2011. Father Karadima, now 84, was ordered to retire to a “life of prayer and penitence.”

The appeal was also a test case for the pope’s stated policy of zero tolerance for clerical abuses.

“We are used to the blows by the Chilean Catholic hierarchy, but it’s especially hurtful when the slap in the face comes from Pope Francis himself,” Juan Carlos Cruz, 50, who said he was abused by Father Karadima in the ‘80s, said in an interview. “We hoped he was different.”

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CHILE
Fox News Latino

Some 600 people gathered Saturday in front of the cathedral in the southern Chilean town of Osorno to protest against Fr. Juan Barros as he assumed the position of bishop of the diocese, because he is perceived to have covered up another priest’s sexual abuse of minors.

Many of the protesters, dressed in black and carrying hundreds of black balloons, waited for the arrival of Fr. Barros, who had to enter through a back door to avoid the booing.

San Mateo Cathedral in Osorno, a city located 942 kilometers (585 miles) south of Santiago, was cordoned off at sunrise by police, who failed, however, to prevent scores of demonstrators from entering the cathedral grounds throwing things and shouting “Pedophile priest!”

Nonetheless, Barros said Mass under normal conditions.

The naming of Juan Barros by Pope Francis was met from the beginning with rejection both at a political level and by the Catholic community itself, which in Chile constitutes some 68 percent of the population.

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UNITED STATES
The Anchoress

March 20, 2015 by Elizabeth Scalia

I never write about these stories because they make me physically ill, so I leave it to others. But it seems like this story is dying on the vine, and I’m not sure it should. And it’s Lent, when we’re supposed to do difficult things, so here goes.

Pope Francis has appointed Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid to a Bishopric in Southern Chile, and Barros is set to be installed there tomorrow, March 21.

This may be a problematic appointment, one that blows up in the Holy Father’s face, because it conflicts with his own “zero tolerance” policies in matters of sexual abuse.

There have been several news reports on the controversial nature of the Barros appointment, but for whatever reason, not much reaction. I can’t help but be surprised. It seems to me that if Pope Benedict were making this appointment, it would be front-page and above-the-fold, and leading every newscast, and the punditry would be unrelentingly interested.

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CHILE
U-T San Diego

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — A bishop was ordained in southern Chile on Saturday amid riot police and shouting protesters who accuse him of covering up crimes of a mentor the Vatican has sanctioned for abusing young boys.

Hundreds of churchgoers dressed in the black of mourning denounced the 58-year-old Rev. Juan Barros as he took over as bishop of the southern city of Osorno. Many called for him to immediately resign.

Police had to escort Barros out of the church after his ordination, which was attended by only 15 of the country’s 35 bishops and about 20 of the 35 priests in the diocese some 580 miles (930 kilometers) south of Santiago.

While Barros himself is not accused of molestation, at least three victims of sex abuse say he was present when they were molested by the Rev. Fernando Karadima in the 1980s and 90s.

The controversy has been closely watched by victims, advocacy groups and lawmakers as a test of Pope Francis’ promises to crack down on clerical sex abuse.

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CANADA
Kamloops This Week

By: Cam Fortems in Courts, First Nations, News March 20, 2015

Four elders from the Tk’emlups Indian Band (TIB) will accompany Chief Shane Gottfriedson and band councillors to Vancouver next month when lawyers begin arguing to certify a class-action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of First Nations students who attended residential schools.

Gottfriedson told reporters at a press conference on on Friday, March 20, that local corporations and others have donated to a special fund to allow the elders — day scholars themselves — to be in Vancouver to hear arguments in Federal Court for one week starting on April 13.

While First Nations people who lived at Indian residential schools were given compensation by the federal government, Ottawa has refused to compensate those who attended the schools only during the day.

Gottfriedson said those students suffered many of the same sexual, physical and emotional abuses as those who lived in dormitories.

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NEDERLAND
Volkskrant

[An elderly priest who was accused of abuse still works with children in Brazil.]

De hoogbejaarde Nederlandse pater Cornelio die in eigen land kinderen misbruikte, werkt in Brazilië nog altijd met kinderen. Dat blijkt uit een uitzending van het EO-televisieprogramma Dit is de Dag Onderzoek, die vanavond wordt uitgezonden.

Door: Jenne Jan Holtland 21 maart 2015

De congregatie van de pater, de Broeders van Onze Lieve Vrouw van Lourdes, is zeker vanaf 2012 op de hoogte van het misbruik. Eerder zegde de congregatie toe ‘passende maatregelen’ te nemen tegen de pater, maar die zegt daar zelf niets van te hebben gemerkt.

Drie mannen hebben tegenover het Meldpunt Seksueel Misbruik RKK verklaard meermalen te zijn misbruikt door pater Cornelio (90), die tussen 1962 en 1988 katholiek jongerenwerker was in Vught. De pater zelf heeft dat schriftelijk erkend, maar vertelt tegen Dit is de Dag Onderzoek (NPO 2, 21.15 uur) een andere versie. ‘Ik ben eunuch, heb geen seksuele gevoelens. Het zijn allemaal leugens, leugens, leugens.’

Het Meldpunt bestaat sinds najaar 2011. De onderzoekers zouden zijn gestuit op tientallen geestelijken die in Nederland kinderen hebben misbruikt en van wie ‘signalen’ bestaan dat ze ook overzee in de fout zijn gegaan. Het zou gaan om missionarissen die werkzaam waren in Kenia, Chili, Suriname en de Antillen. Vier van hen zouden nog in leven zijn, onder wie pater Cornelio.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

DAVID PENBERTHY SUNDAY HERALD SUN MARCH 22, 2015

IT IS difficult to imagine a darker scenario. Two adult men having a private conversation in which one reveals he has perpetrated sickening acts of sexual violence against a child, with the second agreeing that he will take the man’s secret to the grave.

A dark scenario and under Australian law, a wholly legal one.

Over the past few months there has been a lot of talk, fuelled in large part by the abject behaviour of radical Islamists, about how in a secular society such as ours the law should trump God every time.

There were those two ratbags in a Sydney court last year who refused to stand for the judge, saying the only authority they recognised was Allah. Whatever. Those men were denounced for their actions and rightly so, with the NSW Attorney-General investigating the application of contempt laws in that case.

If Australia is going to be consistent on this issue it seems bizarre that our laws currently doff their caps to the strictures of the Catholic Church when it comes to the question of information obtained in the confessional.

We can tut-tut about our rattier Muslim friends not respecting the primacy of law, yet when it comes to the Seal of the Confessional, we have the perverse situation where every state of Australia has deliberately structured its laws to run second to a theological tradition which places children at risk and lets bad people reoffend.

This week one of the most senior Catholic priests in Australia, Archbishop Peter Wilson, was charged with allegedly concealing allegations of child sexual abuse by the convicted paedophile priest James Fletcher in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese in the 1970s.

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NEDERLAND/CURACAO
Seksueelmisbruik

[Robert Chesal: Sexual abuse is massively condoned in Curacao.]

Toen journalist Robert Chesal het seksueel misbruik in de katholieke kerk op grote schaal onthulde in 2010, kwamen vele meldingen binnen van mensen die waren misbruikt in Nederland, maar per direct waren er ook meldingen uit Curaçao. Een golf van publiciteit was het gevolg. In Nederland welteverstaan, niét op Curaçao. In zijn recent verschenen boek Een verzwegen leven doet Chesal verslag van de gruwelijkheden, ook op Curaçao. Maar wie denkt dat het misbruik is gestopt, heeft het mis: met financiële vergoedingen en in die zin afhankelijkheid van de kerk worden momenteel veelal arme gezinnen het zwijgen opgelegd.

“Een misbruikt kind is getekend voor zijn leven, misbruik verdwijnt nooit uit je hart en bestaan. De zoektocht naar erkenning is levenslang.” Dat zegt de uit Amerika afkomstige Robert Chesal, die als journalist bij Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (sinds 1990) samen met NRC-journalist Joep Dohmen het grootschalige misbruik binnen de katholieke kerk op het spoor kwam. Ze doken er samen in en het liet hen niet meer los. Chesal was genoodzaakt enige tijd te stoppen aangezien de meldingen hem te zwaar vielen.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY MARINA VILLENEUVE AND STEFANIE DAZIO
STAFF WRITERS | THE RECORD

A youth pastor in a Wyckoff church has been charged with sexual assault and child endangerment in connection with alleged physical contact and text messages with several teenage girls in a church youth group.

David M. Hayman, 37, of Oradell is charged with two counts of sexual assault in connection with offenses committed in 2014 and 2011, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office said. He also is charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of children in 2003, 2006, twice in 2010 and also in 2013, according to jail records.

Hayman’s arrest Thursday came 10 months after a church representative had first reported inappropriate text messages to authorities, Cornerstone Christian Church senior Pastor Fred Provencher said Friday. Hayman remained in the Bergen County Jail on Friday on $250,000 bail.

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NEDERLAND
Dit

[Dutch missionaries have been accused of abuse but where can the foreign victims go with their story. What happens to the perpetrators. Read our complete investigation.]

Wat weten we over misbruik door Nederlandse missionarissen? Waar kunnen buitenlandse slachtoffers heen met hun verhaal? En wat gebeurt er met de daders? Lees ons complete onderzoek.

Er zijn weinig landen in de wereld die zoveel missionarissen hebben uitgezonden als Nederland. Op het hoogtepunt, in 1963, zijn er wereldwijd 8866 Nederlandse missionarissen actief. 1 op de 11 missionarissen is op dat moment van Nederlandse afkomst. Sommigen werken als priester, andere werken in het onderwijs of de gezondheidszorg. In de kaart hieronder een overzicht van alle Nederlandse missionarissen per land in 1963.

Ondanks het grote aantal is er in Nederland nooit onderzoek gedaan naar seksueel misbruik door missionarissen in het buitenland. Ons onderzoek begint op de website van het Meldpunt Misbruik RKK, het officiële meldpunt van de katholieke kerk in Nederland. We bekijken meer dan 700 geanonimiseerde meldingen die op de website staan, op zoek naar aanwijzingen van misbruik in de missie.

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DEUTCHLAND
Rhein-Erft Rundschau

[The accusation of sexual abuse against one of the educators St. Dionysius in Heppendorf was rejected by the prosecution in Cologne. The prosecutor saw no evidence of a crime.]

Der Vorwurf des sexuellen Missbrauchs gegen eine Mitarbeiterin der Kita St. Dionysius in Heppendorf wurde von der Staatsanwaltschaft Köln zurückgewiesen. Sie sieht keine „tragfähigen Anhaltspunkte“. Von Bernd Rupprecht, Eva Müller und Manfred Funken

Elsdorf-Heppendorf.
Im Ort ist es Tagesgespräch: Gegen eine Mitarbeiterin der Kindertagesstätte St. Dionysius in Heppendorf hat das Erzbistum Köln Anzeige wegen des Verdachts des sexuellen Missbrauchs erstattet. Die Mitarbeiterin wurde vom Dienst freigestellt. Die Staatsanwaltschaft Köln jedoch sieht „keine tragfähigen Anhaltspunkte für einen Anfangsverdacht“ und hat keine Ermittlungen eingeleitet. Über eine Beschwerde muss die Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Köln entscheiden.

Nach Einschätzung des Trägers, des Kirchengemeindeverbands Elsdorf, und des Erzbistums bestehe der Anfangsverdacht des sexuellen Missbrauchs, sagt der Pressesprecher des Erzbistums, Christoph Heckeley. Eltern hätten sich bei den Ansprechpartnern des Erzbistums gemeldet. Die Angaben seien zunächst protokolliert worden. Dann seien Experten eingeschaltet worden, weitere Gespräche hätten stattgefunden.

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CURACAO
BN de Stem (Nederland)

[‘Abuse Father’ still works with children]

HILVERSUM (ANP) – Een 90-jarige Nederlandse pater die in de jaren 70 op Curaçao jonge jongens seksueel heeft misbruikt, werkt in Brazilië nog steeds dagelijks met kinderen. Pater Cornelio, die ook nog enkele jaren in Vught heeft gewoond, heeft tegenover het Meldpunt Misbruik van de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk schriftelijk erkend dat hij zich aan jongens heeft vergrepen. Dat meldt het tv-programma Dit is de Dag Onderzoek (EO) zaterdag.

Nooit bestraft
De Broeders van Onze Lieve Vrouw van Lourdes, de congregatie waar de pater aan verbonden is, was al geruime tijd op de hoogte. Maar de beloofde ‘passende maatregelen’ bleven uit. Zelf zegt de pater daarover: ,,Ik heb daar nooit iets van gemerkt. Ik heb een dagopvang opgezet waar ik dag in dag uit kinderen begeleid bij het maken van speelgoed.” Pater Cornelio werkt sinds 1988 in Brazilië. ,,Ik heb van de congregatie voor misbruik ook nooit een bestraffing gekregen. Helemaal niets.” Andere beschuldigingen verwijst hij naar de prullenbak.

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CURACAO
Caraibisch Uitzicht

[Abuse scandals in the Catholic Church become known here in 2010. Robrt Chesal, who wrote about the abuse, said there must first be recognition of the damage incurred. In many cases the perpetrators cannot be found so the problem cannot be discussed face to face with the victims.]

Het feit dat misbruikschandalen in de katholieke kerk vanaf 2010 boven tafel zijn gekomen, dat mensen hun verhaal kwijt konden, heeft gemaakt dat er enige verlichting kwam. Robert Chesal: “Wil er sprake zijn van genezing dan dient er eerst erkenning te komen voor de beschadiging die is opgelopen. In de meeste gevallen zijn de daders onvindbaar, waardoor het probleem nooit face to face besproken kan worden. Veel slachtoffers hebben de pijn toegedekt en verstopt, maar pijn toelaten is de enige manier om vooruit te komen.”

Veel slachtoffers in Nederland hebben zich na 2010 kunnen uiten en zijn daardoor individueel een stuk opgeschoten. In een maatschappij als die van Curaçao is het niet zo gebruikelijk te praten over zaken als deze. Chesal: “Ik herken dat uit mijn eigen jeugd in Florida; op Curaçao kreeg ik hetzelfde gevoel. De code is: Keep it light, keep it happy, blijf lachen, alleen maar de succesverhalen. De altijd maar sterke buitenkant, de machocultuur. Ik heb me altijd afgevraagd hoe het kan dat macho’s zelf niet kunnen zien hoe ‘zwak’ ze zijn. Voor mij zijn de sterkste mensen diegenen die toegeven dat ze ook zwak zijn.”

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Mgr Charles Scicluna this morning was installed as the new archbishop of the archdiocese of Malta in a ceremony that took place at the Mdina Cathedral.

The ceremony was a formal occasion in which he officially took over the running of the archdiocese after his appointment was announced a month ago.

In comments he made to the media present as he left his parents home in Lija (see video below), Mgr Scicluna said he was both nervous and excited.

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SCITUATE
The Patriot Ledger

By Fred Hanson
The Patriot Ledger

Posted Mar. 20, 2015

A Norfolk Superior Court judge is considering a request that would order the parishioners out of St. Frances Cabrini Church after a decade-long vigil.

Judge Edward Leibensperger gave lawyers representing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and the Friends of St. Frances Cabrini until Tuesday to make additional filings in the case. He did not give any indication on when he would issue his ruling.

The archdiocese brought the action after parishioners failed to meet a March 6 deadline for leaving the church.

“The defendants have no right to occupy the church,” said Bill Dailey, a lawyer representing the archdiocese said during an hour-long court hearing on Friday. “There is no legal right to occupy the church.”

Dailey said the archdiocese allowed the group to occupy the church while it appealed the decision to close the church. The Vatican’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura, last summer upheld the archdiocese’s decision to close the church.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Vatican wanted Mgr Scicluna in Rome, Mgr Mercieca wanted him here – parents of new archbishop

Duncan Barry
Saturday, 21 March 2015

New Arcbishop Mgr Charles Scicluna had to decide whether to work closely with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – who later became Pope – or remain here at the request of the then Archbishop of Malta Joseph Mercieca. This after Mgr Scicluna ended his studies in Rome back in the 1990s, his parents said in an interview.

“At the time, Cardinal Ratzinger asked our son Charles to work at his side but Archbishop Emeritus Joseph Mercieca wanted him here,” his father recalled. But with his legal background, Mgr Scicluna chose to go to Rome, eventually becoming the Vatican’s chief prosecutor in abuse cases when Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope.

Speaking to The Malta Independent inside their Lija home before their son’s installation ceremony, his parents – Manwel and Maria Carmela – and their other three children, said that Charles showed interest in priesthood at a very young age.

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VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News

Vatican City (AFP) – Pope Francis came under fire on Friday after accepting the de facto resignation of a British cardinal disgraced in a sex scandal without any follow-up on the allegations against him.

A statement from the Vatican said Francis had accepted British former archbishop Keith O’Brien’s resignation of the rights and privileges of a cardinal in a highly unusual move for which the last precedent dates from 1927.

It came two years after O’Brien stepped down as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, having admitted inappropriate sexual behaviour towards priests in the 1980s.

At the time of his resignation, O’Brien was the most senior Catholic churchman in Britain and an outspoken critic of homosexuality — which he described as a “moral degradation” — and gay marriage.

He was exposed as a hypocrite when several priests who had been in his charge, one of whom had left the priesthood, came forward with testimony that he had made unwanted sexual advances to them, often after late night drinking sessions.

In a statement, the Vatican said the resignation had been presented “after a long period of prayer” — a formulation which means the matter was dealt with by the pope personally, without reference to an internal church court.

“With this provision, His Holiness would like to manifest his pastoral solicitude to all the faithful of the Church in Scotland and to encourage them to continue with hope the path of renewal and reconciliation,” the statement added.

SNAP, a global campaign group on the issue of clerical sex abuse which counts many victims among its activists, said the pope’s handling of the issue was tantamount to a cover up.

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OREGON
Bend Bulletin

By Scott Hammers / The Bulletin
Published Mar 21, 2015

The Bishop of the Diocese of Baker is again critiquing a former Catholic priest, posting a letter on the Diocese website advising “faithful Catholics” not to take part in services and rituals performed by James Radloff.

Radloff was at the helm of the Bend-based St. Francis of Assisi parish for nearly two years until he was dismissed by Bishop Liam Cary in October 2013. The diocese has said little about the reasons for Radloff’s dismissal, other than to say — at the time — that Radloff remained a priest “in good standing.”

Shortly after he was removed from his post, Radloff appealed to the Vatican to reverse Cary’s decision. After his appeal was denied, Radloff announced he was leaving the Roman Catholic Church to serve as pastor of the Holy Communion Evangelical Catholic Church, a small sect that embraces much of the ritual and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church while taking a more liberal approach on social issues.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

March 21, 2015

Rachel Browne

A former Catholic brother has been arrested over a number of sex offences allegedly committed against boys at two Sydney schools in the 1980s.

The 52-year-old man was charged on Friday after a police investigation into allegations he sexually assaulted boys at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill in 1987 and St Gregory’s College in Campbelltown in 1989.

The two students were aged 12 at the time of the alleged sexual assaults.

Both matters were reported to the police in late 2014, with the investigation run by the Campbelltown Local Area Command.

The former brother, who was working at the Marist Brothers schools when the alleged assaults occurred, was arrested at Tweed Heads Police Station on Friday afternoon.

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GERMANY
National Catholic Reporter

Christa Pongratz-Lippitt | Mar. 20, 2015

The church must change its perspective on sexuality, have more confidence in the faithful, and take greater heed of decisions of conscience, the German Conference of Religious Superiors (DOK) emphasized in its input for the coming Synod of Bishops in October.

In their eight-page statement to the German bishops’ conference’s request that DOK participate in the opinion-forming process up to the synod, the superiors pointed out how important it is for the church to have a more open view of sexuality.

The statement said Catholics today think it particularly important that sexuality should not inspire fear and anxiety as it so often did for many Catholics in the past. The faithful in Germany today are convinced that sexual fulfillment is “important and precious.”

The large majority, moreover, do not believe that every sexual act must be open to procreation but strive to practice responsible parenthood.

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